What? Did we forget to mention that all of the toys in their house are alive? Silly us.
Released in 2005 for the GameCube, Chibi-Robo! is considered something of a cult hit. It was critically praised, but sold poorly—partially due to its odd nature and partially due to the overall bad sales of the system it was on. Nintendo included it as one of their "New Play Control!" Updated Rereleases for Wii, but only in Japan. Still, if you have a Wii (or still have a GameCube kicking around), check this out—it's quite fun, cute as a button, and unexpectedly moving.
Despite the poor sales, it managed to spawn a very cute sequel called Chibi-Robo! Park Patrol on the Nintendo DS, this time with a Green Aesop thrown in; but as it was a Walmart exclusive for a while after release, it didn't sell very well either.
A third entry, Welcome Home, Chibi-Robo! Happy Rich Big Sweep was released in Japan for the Nintendo DS in Fall 2009, but passed most of the country by due to lack of advertising.
A 3DS game subtitled Photo Finder appeared on the 3DS, including Augmented Reality features where Chibi-Robo was tasked with finding items and objects called Nostaljunk by taking pictures of real world objects.
Another 3DS game, named Chibi-Robo! Zip Lash (or Go! Go! Chibi-Robo! in Japanese) was announced in May 2015 and released on October 9, 2015 in North America. It features a sidescrolling, more traditional platforming style of gameplay, with gameplay reminiscent of Bionic Commando and Castlevania which has Chibi-Robo hunting down snack-stealing aliens while using his extending plug cord as a whip. It is also compatible with an adorable Chibi-Robo amiibo allowing access to a capsule machine and Super Chibi-Robo.
This game provides examples of:
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The Sanderson's kitchen sink. Justified, as Chibi is only a few inches tall. What's huge to him is tiny to everyone else.
- The Ace: DRAAAAAKE REDCRESSSSST!
- Alien Invasion: Subverted. At first, the aliens seem mysterious and ominous. However, they're perfectly nice folks.
- There are evil spidery robots, as well, but they're not aliens.
- The aliens from Zip Lash are actually malicious and are stealing resources. The red ones of course, the crying blue ones are just lost.
- Aliens Speaking English: Apparently, alien language is just normal language, spoken really, really softly.
- All Love Is Unrequited: Every lovestruck character in the game manages to avert this... except for Dinah, who never admits her liking for Phil to his face without trying to take it back as a joke even by the end of their subplot, which... must have been a pretty tough time for her, to say the least. Poor Sophie never really gets anywhere even once she mostly averts this, either.
- Ambiguous Gender: The Phillies.
- Ambiguously Gay: Ketschburg and Moustardin from Photo Finder. The only real ambiguity about it is the fact that they're never actually called a couple. They have lines where they talk about the fact that they were (literally) made for each other, and during one sidequest, when it looks like Miss Clayra might have designs on Ketschburg, Moustardin exclaims that she'll never let her take Ketschburg away from him.
- American Kirby Is Hardcore: An extremely light and subtle example that is easy to miss: on the Japanese box art, Chibi-Robo is shown carrying a wadded up piece of paper. The American cover is identical in every way, except now he's carrying his own plug, possibly to give him a slightly tougher look.
- Arm Cannon: The Chibi-Blaster, which fires (mostly) harmless sonic blasts.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Mrs. Sanderson kissing Mr. Sanderson in the end.
- Badass Creed: "YOU'RE FREE RANGERS! YOU'RE HARD-BOILED!"
- Bad Powers, Good People: Kid Eggplant is an Eggplant Man with the power to turn others into Eggplant Men, but he's always courteous enough to ask permission first. He'd be pretty terrifying if he wasn't such a Nice Guy.
- Beast and Beauty: The mummy action figure Mort loves the beautiful princess doll Princess Pitts.
- Benevolent Architecture: No matter how out-of-the-way it seems, some part of the landscape will let you get up there.
- There are quite a few places you can't get to without the use of a Utilibot, however.
- And, thanks to Park Patrol, you can even make the landscape that way!
- Big "NO!": Mr. Sanderson utters one when he realizes that his wife wants to divorce him.
- Bland-Name Product: The company that made Chibi-Robo, Citrusoft, is a reference to Apple. In a similar vein, the company that made the evil Spydorz, Macroware, is a thinly veiled poke at Microsoft.
- Averted in Zip Lash. See Product Placement below.
- Bowdlerize: In Zip Lash, Toby mentions that Pez dispensers were once made to look like butane lighters, but dances around the issue of why that was. All he says was that it was to help people "break a bad habit," no further details offered. What sort of bad habit, anyway? Flagrant pyromania?
- Bragging Rights Reward: Collecting all the stickers.
- Same with the frog rings. Collecting them all and giving them to Jenny makes her claim that "the spell is broken" as she takes off her hat. Mrs. Sanderson is happily surprised she stops pretending to be a frog, but unfortunately, she puts the hat back on as soon as you leave the kitchen, and now all the frog rings are re-located where you previously found them. All those efforts you put into finding them all? Mounts to nothing.
- Bumbling Dad: Mr. Sanderson is one for sure.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Mr. Sanderson. Despite being a Bumbling Dad to the extreme, he's actually a brilliant inventor.
- The Cameo: A character named Kid Eggplant looks VERY similar to Eggplant Man from Wrecking Crew. There's also Primopuel, who is a real toy produced by Bandai (though only in Japan).
- Cartoon Creature: Squid Vicious in Photo Finder is the Animate Inanimate Object version of this. For most of the other characters in the game, it's obvious what sort of objects they represent (plasticine clay, a tin robot, garden statuary), but Squid is just sort of a plasticky-looking strange... thing.
- Cash Gate: Zip-Lash's final boss requires Chibi to buy Giga-Robo's parts to be able to face it.
- Cast from Hit Points: Chibi has one stat for everything, from using special abilities to taking damage to time—it's his battery. Plugging into a handy outlet gives you a full heal.
- In Zip Lash however, it functions more as a time limit as the battery drains at a constant rate, regardless of any action taken.
- Checkpoint Starvation: The Backyard has no outlets to speak of, meaning that progress in the area is limited by the amount of Watts that Chibi-Robo can currently store. Jenny's Room has just one outlet, but it's on the ground floor in a corner; much of the content in that area requires climbing up to higher ground and using the Chibi-Copter to hover around stuff, meaning if Chibi-Robo needs to recharge he'll have to undo all his progress climbing up the area.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: A few of the non-
Woobies. - Company Cross References:
- Bandai Namco co-produced the original game. You can receive a Tamagotchi toy (another Bandai property) as an item for completing Captain Plankbeard's sidequests and can interact with it.
- Zip-Lash features a Nintendo reference for how the game is available on the Nintendo 3DS. The description for the banana peel in the trash mentions Telly having a nightmare about a giant gorilla driving near him in a go-kart and throwing a huge banana peel at him. That's almost certainly gotta be Donkey Kong as he would show up in a Mario Kart race.
- Concepts Are Cheap: Lampshaded with Drake Redcrest. According to his "official" bio, he fights for justice, but he actually has no idea what justice really means and is in a state of mild existential crisis because of it.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: An incredibly weird heroic version of this trope happens near the end of the Mort/Princess Pitts storyline. Princess Pitts finally figures out that Mort is the one delivering her flowers, and actually falls in love with him- but his Nightmare Face terrifies her, and she faints at the sight of it. Chibi-Robo fixes the issue by repeatedly scaring the living daylights out of the princess several times over, until she becomes used to scary things and gets over her fears. It's rather sweet, in a twisted way.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: When Chibi plugs in to recharge, if the player mashes buttons in an effort to rush through Telly's save dialog (and on a heavy "15 minute" day this can be as many as 3-5 recharges), then when Chibi goes to unplug he gets harmlessly whacked with a pan or can top dropped from above. Telly denies it, of course, stating he has no idea where it came from, but counts the number of times it has happened.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: When the Spydorz go on a huge rampage, Mr. Sanderson suddenly takes charge and proves himself to be remarkably competent and clever.
- Cute Machines: The title character, along with his various robot buddies.
- David vs. Goliath: Chibi-Robo goes up against The Spydor Queen towards the end.
- Disco Dan: Funky Phil ("Awwww yeah! Are you funky?!)
- Park Patrol follows up on this with the beatboxing Kid Kombo, mascot of Monkey Burger, who teaches you dance moves.
- Disney Death: Funky Phil. He was just "turned off."
- Every time a toy runs out of energy in Park Patrol, complete with cheesy parting words.
- Dinah and Sophie, though the "Disney" part can come in too quickly afterwards for it to be made particularly dramatic. Dinah jumps out of her loft after you collect all of the lego blocks and smashes on the floor, but Mr. Sanderson puts her back together, which was part of her plan; Sophie passes out after giving Drake her letter and her butterfly-formed ghost is shown floating out of her body, but trying to talk to her revives her, and it also happens every time you use the ghost costume's pose on her.
- You yourself are able to pull one off. Telly Vision even cries over your 'grave' when you fall over.
- Chibi gets a plot-required one after plugging in to Giga-Robo. It's used to show Giga-Robo's past.
- Every time a toy runs out of energy in Park Patrol, complete with
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Sunshine wants his nectar...
- The Dragon: Sergeant Smogglor to Miasmo in the Park Patrol.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: The Sergeant of the Free Rangers is a strange blend of this and A Father to His Men. He's hard on them, but he does truly care about them, and he's arguably harder on himself.
- Dysfunction Junction: Everyone in that house has serious issues.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Chibi-Robo works his tiny metal butt off to make everyone in the house happy, and in doing so fixes everyone's problems. He even manages to fix the country-wide energy crisis at the end of the game as well.
- Eccentric Townsfolk: Added to the fact that they're toys...
- Ecocidal Antagonist: The villains of Park Patrol are the smoglings, who dance around flowers in the park to turn them black (which causes them to wilt overnight). They're mainly the Mooks for Sergeant Smogglor, who summons them daily to undo all of Chibi-Robo's work in the park. Sergeant Smogglor is also actually General Greenthumb, a hero who was brainwashed by Miasmo, the true Big Bad of the game.
- Expy: Drake Redcrest's design was obviously Gatchaman-based (his original name in the Japanese version was "Gocchiman"), and he seems to have a bit of Buzz Lightyear in him, as well. Funnily enough, he seems to have both of Buzz Lightyear's personalities in him: he's completely aware that he's a toy, yet acts like a real super hero anyway.
- The American version of Drake Redcrest (with the yellow helmet visor) appears to be based on a rooster.
- Extended Gameplay: There's quite a lot to do once you manage to take down the Spydorz Queen. Getting all the stickers, getting the frog rings, and reactivating Giga-Robo are the primary objectives, and the credits roll once you complete the latter.
- The Faceless: The inventor of the Park Patrol Chibi-Robo model. We see the rest of his body in the intro and tutorial.
- All the humans in Park Patrol are like this actually, which is weird considering in all of the other Chibi-Robo games you can see everyone's face.
- Fake Longevity: Zip Lash has two major roadblocks.
- Upon completing a level, you spin a roulette wheel to determine which one you go to next. Since you can't officially beat the stage without having beaten all the levels in it, there's no real benefit to skipping around, and most of the time, it just causes you to have to replay old stages over and over until you're lucky enough to land on all of them.
- The final boss fight is locked behind an extremely large Cash Gate: as in, one where an entire somewhat fast playthrough will get you maybe a third of the way there. Keep in mind that the main function of money is skipping already-played stages and buying panels to circumvent the roulette wheel, so trying to beat the game quickly just makes the roadblock even bigger.
- Fangirl: Sophie to Drake Redcrest, and Dinah to Funky Phil to a lesser extent.
- Fetch Quest: That's what happens when you turn an Adventure Game into a platformer-esque game.
- And it gets worse when you merge it with a Simulation Game.
- Frothy Mugs of Water: Captain Plankbeard repeatedly drinks from a wooden jug during conversation. After a few drinks, he remarks that he "Love(s) the taste of water".
- Gag Lips: Sophie
- G-Rated Drug: Sunshine and his "nectar" addiction.
- Gender Equals Breed: More like, "Gender Equals Toy Line." The children of Mort and Princess Pitts are a male mummy action figure and a female princess doll.
- Gotta Catch 'Em All: The frog rings, and specific items you collect (like crayons).
- There are a few snacks, 3 large coins, and 3 Chibi-Tots in each level in Zip Lash. If you have a Chibi-Robo amiibo, you also have figures to collect. Some of which come from yet more amiibo...
- Granola Girl: Molly Mapleleaf in Park Patrol, a plastic tree toy whose goal is to help the environment in any way she can, and dreams of becoming a real biodegradable tree in the next life.
- Gratuitous Japanese: Parodied extensively with Telly Vision's song "Teriyaki Blues." The opening lines of the song are "in Japanese," but consist entirely of loanwords like "ninja" and "otaku."
- Guide Dang It!:
- In the Mort and Princess sidestory, during the castle scaling, you have to somehow conclude that you need to use the Chibi Blaster on the upright clock hand. The only indication you get is that the hand wiggles, but up until this point you have been taught the only things you can shoot are enemies and stickers, which the clock hand is/has neither. Making this worse is that unless you beat the game and have unlimited energy, scaling the castle takes a huge amount of energy to do and thus you don't generally have a whole lot of time to stop and figure things out.
- In Park Patrol, the game never tells you that the appearance of some friends is dependent on another specific friend being active. Since achieving good friend status requires that friend to appear a set number of times, this can be rather irritating for players who aren't in the know.
- Hammerspace: Chibi-Robo can carry anything in his head; all from a flower seed to a pirate ship.
- Happily Married: Mort and Pitts, once you complete their Story Arc.
- The Sandersons, once you complete the main storyline.
- Heroic BSoD - Parodied. The father has one of these whenever anything mildly interesting happens.(after Chibi-Robo picked up a flower): Hot! Diggity! Dog! That's AWESOOOOOOOME!!!!
- Though in that last example, it likely was more over the fact that Chibi put the flower (which is quite a bit bigger than Chibi) in its head.
- After Funky Phil "dies", Dinah spends the next solid 24 hours (not in actual time, of course) standing next to him with wild eyes, talking nonsense.
- Humongous Mecha: Compared to Chibi-Robo, Giga-Robo certainly looks the part, but obviously does not count since he's really only child sized. But one shows up as Giant-Robo and the True Final Boss of Zip Lash.
- Hyperspace Arsenal: How does Chibi fit all that stuff in his head?
- It gets ridiculous enough to fall into Refuge in Audacity, as well. Like when you carry a pirate ship that is easily over 10 times Chibi's size.
- I'm Okay!: Sophie loudly proclaims "FEELS GOOOOD!" after falling down the stairs.
- Improbable Weapon User: The weapon of choice in the 3DS game is a plug cord that's used as a whip.
- In Name Only: Pretty much the only thing Zip Lash has in common with the other games in the series is that it features Chibi-Robo, Telly, and a handful of other characters in cameo roles. Even aside from being a sidescroller instead of a 3D exploration game, the only mechanic shared between Zip Lash and its predecessors is the battery: the environments are nothing alike, the game is largely themed around classic videogame biomes with largely generic environments rather than the Toy Story-esque household of before, and the adventure game-esque item puzzles are gone in favor of focusing on the whip, something that wasn't even a usable weapon originally.
- In-Universe Game Clock: You can customize the length. Shorter days mean less waiting for time-based events, but obviously, less time to do chores. Longer days mean more time to do stuff, but when it comes to time-based events, be prepared to wait unless you've got a pair of Pajamas.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: The Sergeant of the Free Rangers. While he is harsh on them and insults them despite hard work, he is genuinely worried about the youngest ranger, Memphis, who was kidnapped by Tao.
- Also, Captain Plankbeard, who is quite harsh-mouthed, but he is really attached to Giga-Robo.
- Kleptomaniac Hero: You'd think you'd lose points for having so much household stuff go missing. Oh well.
- Large Ham: Drake Redcrest, who for starters claims part of the Space Hunter code is to greet everyone by yelling.
- Also Mr. Sanderson - see the above Heroic BSoD entry.
- Later-Installment Weirdness: While its predecessors are 3D platformers, Zip Lash, in contrast, is a 2D sidescroller.
- Legacy Character: The Chibi-Robo you play as is never the same Chibi-Robo from game to game, despite being similar in both appearance and personality.
- Living Toys: A staple of the series is that most NPCs are these. The first game is the only entry that actually explains their presence. After Giga-Robo kept the alien's spaceship from crashing, they offered him anything he wants, and Giga asked that all the toys in the Sanderson house be brought to life. Jury's out on everybody in the later games, though.
- Lost Wedding Ring: Mr. Sanderson loses his after the main story. You have to fetch it up.
- Love Letter Lunacy: The literal Chew Toy Sophie and her crush on Drake Redcrest.
- Luck-Based Mission: Going from level to level in Zip Lash requires usage of the Destination Wheel, a six sided wheel that choses which level in your current world you play. With how the wheel works, it's possible to play a world's level multiple times, and while you can use coins to tilt the odds in your favour if you want to avoid this, you may need go grind to get past the Cash Gate blocking the True Final Boss.
- Macro Zone: The quirk of the whole franchise given you are playing a small handheld robot.
- Metamorphosis: Each of the toys with problems in Park Patrol goes through this in a metaphorical rebirth after you help them with said problems.
- Mickey Mousing: In the original Chibi-Robo!, almost every one of the titular robot's actions was accompanied by musical notes. Most notably, his footsteps would each play a random note, with the instrument depending on what surface he was walking on (pizzicato strings for wooden surfaces, glockenspiel for tile surfaces, accordion for carpet, etc.). The sequels after Park Patrol don't use this, however.
- Mood Whiplash: Of a kind that can cause decapitation from it's severity. It's a lot more potent to anybody playing who knows what it's like to be in a family where you get A) ignored by a parent not due to ill will but because of circumstances (Jenny and her mother), B) have a family threatening to taken apart because of miscommunication (the father), or C)to care about somebody who tends to irresponsible and makes it difficult to keep making excuses for them, and then finding out they had a reason for it in the first place and didn't want to hurt you with it (the mother). And remember, that all happens after a playful romp with living toys and trying to make the family happy. And that's not all of the problems you face in the game. Possibly Played for Laughs after Phil is found "dead" partway through his and Dinah's sidequest chain - Telly swoops in on the scene and goes literally blue in the face with horror, he suggests that he and Chibi stay with the Phillies and a hysterical Dinah until they settle down... and once everyone falls asleep, he reverts to normal, cheerfully informs Chibi that he's headed back to the Chibi-House, and literally spins away into the air.
- Money for Nothing: After buying all the upgrades, there's really nothing more you need. You also don't need Happy Points after completing the game.
- Money serves as a valuable resource for consumable items in later games and happy points perform this function in Photo Finder. There's also the vending machine in Zip Lash.
- Motor Mouth: Dinah, not so much in the speed of her words as the quantity.
- Mouse World: The setting.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Both Mr. and Mrs. Sanderson go through this: Mr. Sanderson realizes how much of a pain he has been to his wife when she locks herself in her room. While in said room, Mrs. Sanderson will sorrowfully admit to Chibi-Robo that she was also at fault for being so cold and strict with her husband and daughter, keeping herself locked up not just out of anger at her family but out of shame in herself.
- Mythology Gag: A black and white dog named Tao also appeared in Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, which the first game's director Kenichi Nishi also worked on.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: Chibi-Robo gains the ability to use his cord as a whip in Zip Lash. He can even use it to hover in mid air and climb up walls!
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: General Greenthumb's original owner, thinking he's stupid since he can't win playing as him in a game, discards his Greenthumb figure at the park, thus providing the perfect minion for Miasmo.
- Nobody Poops: The Sandersons' house has no bathroom.
- No Name Given: Mr. and Mrs. Sanderson are known as just that, with no mentioned first names. The Japan-published "Sophie's Blog" reveals that their names are George and Helen, respectively.
- No One Gets Left Behind: This is the main conflict with the Free Rangers: a while ago, they let their youngest member, Memphis, get left behind, and they haven't recovered.
- Oh, Crap!: After Chibi-Robo helps Mrs. Sanderson to find a toy receipt that Mr. Sanderson kept hidden from her, she proceeds to chew him out and as a result, lock herself in her room, being unable to stand his habit anymore.
- The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything - Both Captain Plankbeard (a literal pirate, who lampshades this to a degree "As ye know, pirates who aren't evil end up at theme parks...It be terrifyin'") and the Free Rangers (a military-esque group) don't seem to do much in the way of their official jobs—though the Free Rangers do train a lot.
- Hell, when you find the Primopuel, one of the former Free Rangers suggests stealing it from you, only for Captain Plankbeard to shut him down by saying, "You think a pirate would do something so dirty and dastardly?" Yes, even though that's the very definition of a pirate.
- Playable Epilogue: The game continues after resurrecting Giga-Robo, and a few sidequests are only completable after this.
- Park Patrol continues after beating Miasmo and gaining Greenthumb's power source, and the sidequest bit applies here as well.
- Product Placement: Zip Lash has Chibi-Robo collecting real life snack foods from around the world. Giving these snacks to toys hidden in the levels will have them give more info on them.
- Punny Name: Photo Finder has Squid Vicious the punk squid.
- Rage Breaking Point: What pushes Mrs. Sanderson to lock herself in her room and threaten to divorce Mr. Sanderson is the fact that he had yet again wasted money on another Drake Redcrest toy. Her family doing the things they normally do didn't help matters, either.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Mrs. Sanderson gives a scathing one to everybody in the family through a letter because of the things that they do to grate on her nerves and finally having had enough of Mr. Sanderson's wasting money on toys, before dropping quite an atom bomb on Mr. Sanderson that opens his eyes: threat of divorce.Mr. Sanderson: (reading Mrs. Sanderson's letter) Dear, dysfunctional family, Tao tracks mud all over the house! Jenny thinks she's a frog! And the "man" of the house isn't man enough to find another job! Well, I've had enough! I'm sorry, but you've pushed me to the edge. The only option I've got left is... divorce.
- Reluctant Retiree: Bull in Park Patrol. He gets better about it.
- Rewarding Vandalism: As contrary to your main goal as it is, breaking things is required to progress in the game.
- Robot Buddy: The titular Chibi is one, but he has his own robot buddy in the form of Telly Vision. The Park Patrol version also has one in the form of the overly-apologetic Chet.
- Robot Maid: Chibi may only be four inches tall, but he fits.
- Running Gag: In Clean Sweep Skullton keeps showing up in unlikely places with zero explanation for how and why, such as in the fridge, inside the walls, floating through the plumbing and falling down the chimney.
- Schizo Tech: Despite being in a setting that has had functional robots with AI for years (though very power hungry), the Sandersons have two phonographs, no computers, TVs with dials and no bathroom.
- She's All Grown Up: In Clean Sweep we see Jenny as an adult and she is VERY pretty.
- Shout-Out: The game was co-produced by Bandai-Namco, so a Tamagotchi appears in the game.
- One of the characters in the first game is Kid Eggplant who is based on the Eggplant Man. It's also possible he's named after Kid Icarus, since Pit can be turned into an eggplant in that game, too.
- When speaking with the Great Peekoe, Captain Plankbeard mentions Shanty Pete.
- Side Quest: The game is almost nothing but sidequests.
- Smooch of Victory: Jenny will kiss Chibi-Robo whenever he helps her with something.
- Speaking Simlish: "Gubba gubba, doemingmee!"
- Speaks Fluent Animal: Certain outfits allow Chibi to talk to animals.
- Spiritual Successor: To Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, a Japan-only Deconstruction of the RPG genre. Many mechanics are carried over, like the day-night cycles, the use of "love points" as experience points for doing good deeds, and the use of Simlish. Both games share a director and a composer.
- Stalker with a Crush: Sophie really "watches" Drake more than she follows him. Then again, she's slightly less mobile. Once she "dies", though, she constantly flies behind him as a ghost butterfly.
- Stealth Pun: The princess doll's name is Princess Pitts. If that seems like an odd name for a princess, think about some other Nintendo franchises for a bit. What do you find inside of a Peach?
- Stuck in Their Shadow: In-Universe example with Fizz of the penguin mascot duo for PopFizz Soda in Park Patrol. He gets fed up and leaves Pop after a while, but they patch things up later.
- Take That!: In the first game, some cutscenes will feature reports by a news channel called Faux News. Real subtle, guys.
- Talking with Signs: Chibi-Robo is generally voiceless, so he speaks with "yes" and "no" signs.
- Theme Naming: The Free Rangers are all named after major US locations (at least in the American version). Most are cities or nicknames for cities (Frisco), with some oddballs like Maui, an island, and Bama, presumably Alabama.
- Time Skip: The third game in the series, Welcome Home Chibi-Robo!, features a grown-up Jenny as the owner of the household this time around. She even has her own son.
- Toy Time: Jenny's Room.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Nearly every toy in Park Patrol has one.
- Two toys in Welcome Home Chibi-Robo!, Mesa and Habanero, have them in the form of differently colored tomatoes, which are red and green respectively.
- Tragic Robot: In the first game, Giga-Robo. Though he was beloved by both the Sandersons and the household toys, the amount of energy needed to recharge him resulted in a nationwide energy crisis; in turn, the financially-struggling Sandersons had no choice but to leave Giga-Robo dormant in the basement. Once Chibi-Robo and Telly learn about Giga-Robo and how much everyone misses him, they decide to use their own money to help charge Giga-Robo's battery. The ending of the game has a fully-charged Giga-Robo reuniting with his alien friends, who then give Giga-Robo the infinite energy he asked for his battery, preventing another energy crisis to boot.
- Tuckerization: Family dog Tao was a real dog, owned by the game's creator. He looked pretty much exactly like the in-game one. He actually has appearances in many other Skip, Ltd. games (like Captain Rainbow), but the real dog sadly passed away in 2009.
- Turned Against Their Masters: The Spydorz.
- General Greenthumb once he gets his memory back.
- Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: The Sandersons.
- Mort and Princess Pitts.
- Unnamed Parent: Jenny's son Keith (we never know who his dad is). At first, anyway.
- Variable-Length Chain: Chibi's plug, when used as a whip, can reach insane lengths.
- Variable Mix: The music switches to a more energetic version when running with the plug.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: If you find Sophie's love letter to Drake Redcrest that she dropped, you can either give it back or...give it to Redcrest.
- You are allowed to kill any chibi-tots you find in Zip Lash.
- Video Game Caring Potential:
- Finding all of Jenny's frog rings is not a requirement, but if you find them all and give them to her she will take off her hat. Not permanently, however.
- Voice for the Voiceless: Chibi-Robo's manager will usually do the talking for him. According to Telly, it's part of their job.
- The Voiceless:
- There have been several models of Chibi-Robo, and none of them have been equipped with the ability to speak.note
- In the first game, Jenny only talks with frog croaks, and will only talk in complete English when Chibi-Robo is wearing the frog suit, as, in her imagination, she was cursed to talk like a frog.
- Walking the Earth: The puppet Francois, due to a desire to break his strings borne from another toy wondering if he truly has free will.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Got a horde of Spydorz you want to get rid of quickly? Pose while wearing the ghost suit. For whatever reason, it will cause all of them to explode. Best part of all? Doing so won't impact the scrap they drop.
- Wizard Needs Food Badly: A version of it. Being a robot, Chibi runs off a battery, and he needs to "charge" it periodically. Until the aliens show up and give every robot in the world, including you, perpetual energy.
- The Park Patrol Chibi still needs to plug in frequently at the beginning of its game, but it also has the ability to convert happy points into energy, so the energy crisis was averted anyway. Maybe that was technology derived from the aliens. The toys in Park Patrol occasionally need this too, from Chibi-Robo itself. Except for Smogglor/Greenthumb.
- The Clean Sweep Chibi needs to plug in often, as well, and he also needs to keep the entire house energized by disposing of waste in specialized trash cans.
- The Photo Finder Chibi also still needs to plug in frequently.
- Zip Lash Chibi does too, but he could possibly have been in space at the time.
- The Park Patrol Chibi still needs to plug in frequently at the beginning of its game, but it also has the ability to convert happy points into energy, so the energy crisis was averted anyway. Maybe that was technology derived from the aliens. The toys in Park Patrol occasionally need this too, from Chibi-Robo itself. Except for Smogglor/Greenthumb.
